Sorry, ladies; your mailman’s bulging sack is about to get a lot less sexy.
Victoria’s Secret is discontinuing its catalogs, the Columbus Dispatch reports.
The company is also discontinuing its swimwear line.
Leslie H. Wexner, founder of VS parent company L Brands, said at a shareholders meeting on Thursday that the discontinuations are part of a bid to simplify operations for the company.
Wexner said that, after examining the company’s operations, he “diagnosed a problem: Too damn much complexity. Victoria’s had to be simplified so that it could be faster, more efficient.”
The elimination doesn’t come entirely out of left field; during Thursday’s meeting, L Brands CFO Stuart Burgdoerfer said that the company did a test elimination of the catalog in two markets for a year, and “saw no significant change in sales.”
Meanwhile, the company had been spending between $125 million and $150 million annually to publish and mail the catalogs.
“If we were starting the business today, would one of our marketing activities be paper catalog?” Burgdoerfer pondered.
TheWrap has reached out to spokespeople for L Brands and Victoria’s Secret for comment.
Victoria’s Secret will be compartmentalized into three distinct segments: Victoria’s Secret Lingerie, Victoria’s Secret
Sales will revolve around online transactions and Victoria’s Secret’s brick-and-mortar locations.
“The rationale behind our category exits is that we focus on our most significant core categories,” Burgdoerfer offered. “Our conclusion was that swim is not a core category. We’re making changes from a position of strength.”